The Egyptian Priest Who Was Really a Syrian Philosopher

Iamblichus answered Porphyry's objections to ritual in a book that does not appear under his own name. Porphyry had written a Letter to Anebo, addressed to a fictional Egyptian priest, laying out difficulties with theurgy in the form of questions Anebo was invited to answer. Iamblichus responded in kind, writing as though he were an Egyptian priest himself, one Abammon, replying point by point to Porphyry's letter, and the resulting work is known today by the Latin title later given to it, On the Mysteries, though its own text presents itself throughout as Abammon's reply rather than as Iamblichus speaking in his own voice. The device was not simple disguise. Writing as an Egyptian priest let Iamblichus claim the authority of a very old, non Greek religious tradition for a set of philosophical arguments that were, in fact, his own systematic answer to Porphyry, and the persona's confidence in ritual as necessary rather than optional runs through the whole work. Iamblichus's central claim, that the human soul has descended completely and needs external divine help to return rather than purely its own contemplation, became the position later Athenian Neoplatonists including Proclus built on, so that Porphyry's letter to an invented priest produced, by way of an answer written in that priest's borrowed name, the framework for most of what later theurgic Neoplatonism became.